Battleship Bismarck (64 page)

Personally, McDougall was refined and charming; he cast his spell even over men who were rather remote to his subjects or themes. After I assumed my office as consul general of the Federal Republic in Toronto in April 1968, I was moved to seek him out to thank him again, also in the name of the countless other prisoners of war whose lives he had enriched. In his unassuming way, the professor brushed it off—he had only done the obvious.

Despite all our studies and sports, we would hardly have been able to endure year after year at Bowmanville without access to the fine arts. The camp’s occupants included musicians and soon a symphony orchestra about fifty men strong was formed. We obtained musical instruments and scores through the aid of the Red Cross in various countries, the YMCA, and the representatives of our protecting power. The latter even went to the trouble of having some privately owned instruments shipped from the homeland. In June 1943, I was delighted to take delivery of my violin, which had been sent from Germany at the beginning of March. When at times scores became difficult to obtain, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra helped out in individual cases. Our orchestra’s regular conductor and instructor was a concert pianist, who also composed; the concert master was the Austrian who had been at Shap Wells, who had made many public appearances at home before the war. I remembered the distant violin of my school days, and now played it and later also the viola in the orchestra. The cells of the camp guard house stood at the disposal of those who wished to practice—unless the chance presence of a delinquent precluded such usage. Every day from one to three hours of practice, the scale, the technique of bowing, then from étude to étude. “I should have practiced with this consistency and the understanding that age brings in my younger years,” I told myself again and again when I found how hard it is for a man in his thirties to get
anything new out of his fingers and wrists. But the only thing that mattered was to enjoy making music. Thus many evening rehearsals in the orchestra rolled by; the big gymnasium was the place for them, as well as for public performances. We played symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, one or another movement by Brahms, works of Bach and Handel, and also compositions by our conductor. The latter and our concert master gave solos. There were also request concerts. Besides the big orchestra, we formed a smaller one for pop music and dance music; the best instrumentalists united in a chamber music group; a rich musical life came into being. The performances brought never-ending joy; many may have counted them among the happiest hours of their prison life. I certainly did, with the advantage, even during rehearsals, of allowing myself to be enveloped in and carried away to the world of our classical and romantic composers.

Special enthusiasts could also enjoy recorded music of the highest international renown. Gramophones and records could be purchased through the camp canteen. I often heard the foremost solo violinists, cellists and pianists of that day: Adolf Busch, Bronislaw Huhermann, Mischa Elman, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz, Joseph Szigeti, Emanuel Feuermann, Gregor Piatigorsky, Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein, and Robert Casadesus, to name only a few.

We also put on plays. The performances included dramas, comedies, farces, and puppet shows. Curtains, costumes, wigs and all the requisites were conjured from next to nothing; the resourcefulness and craftsmanship of some individuals achieved true triumphs. The actors, all amateurs, played their roles with insight and dedication; all the female parts were necessarily filled by men, which in general caused no problem and sometimes even added to the charm. I remember
The Piccolomini, Wallenstein’s Death, The Seven Years War, The Spanish Fly, The Muzzle, Hocus-pocus, The Emperor of America
, and puppet shows such as
Aladdin and the Magic Lantern
and
The Canterville Ghost
. The evenings were a great success before an audience that hungered for any sort of diversion. Recitations and readings also found their visitors.

As a rule, we could see German and American films two or three times a week; the German ones often gave us a chance to revisit familiar scenes. The American ones acquainted us with practically the entire modern U.S. film production—which until now had been virtually closed to us—social, adventure, mystery, musical, and war films. Their style of English might make understanding difficult in some cases, but this was not a serious obstacle. The quality of the
film varied greatly, from masterpieces of scriptwriting, directing and acting to absolute nonsense. Unforgettable to me remain the war film
The Sullivans
—which told the story of five brothers who were assigned to the light cruiser
Juneau
and were all lost when the ship was sunk in the Pacific in 1942—and the dance films with Fred Astaire. Up to then only little known in Germany, the master dancer with the unique style was at the peak of his career. I never let pass an opportunity to admire his elegantly aesthetic movements, perfected to the last detail by relentlessly disciplined practice. Linguistically a delight were the films of George Sanders. His appearance of elegant corruption and his marvelously cultivated English made him one of the most sought-after Hollywood stars of the thirties and forties.

Many highly talented men engaged in painting and arts and crafts. Brilliant works of art and craftsmanship were created and could be viewed in exhibitions.

Never cramped, especially not in summer, was the time for the already mentioned sports. Many different kinds could be practiced on Bowmanville’s spacious grounds: handball, football, volleyball, and hockey (bruising as always), tennis, athletics, gymnastics. Day in, day out there was a flourishing athletic life, which was stimulated by competitions, such as footraces. Amateur gardeners had the chance to combine physical activity with the joy of growing things in the outdoors, as their carefully tended flower and vegetable gardens announced. In the greenhouse they could work the whole year through. Anyone who wanted to swim in Lake Ontario could do so upon giving his word of honor not to try to escape. On one’s word of honor it was also possible to go on long walks through the thinly settled neighborhood of the camp. Of course, all activities outside camp were under Canadian surveillance.

We found the Canadian climate, with its long winters and correspondingly short summers, to be quite extreme. In summer the often intense heat sometimes provoked monstrous thunderstorms. The sky would grow dark and dismal, the most dazzling lighting would flash through it, and hailstones the size of hens’ eggs would beat down. On many such occasions the ground was covered by a foot of ice. In winter the country was frequented by blizzards and raging snowstorms. Yet in our “feudal” Bowmanville quarters we were relatively well protected from such extremes. On many evenings the northern lights appeared in the sky. Strange, glowing beams and bundles, like changing stage-curtains, played across the sky. This spectacle always captivated us. The most beautiful of all Canadian seasons
was the autumn, the “Indian summer” that began punctually in the first half of October. The deciduous forest that surrounded the camp, maples and still more maples, glowed to the edge of the horizon in red and gold. The radiant sun was alluring in its taciturn splendor.

Were there escapes, as had taken place earlier at Shap Wells and were indeed the order of the day in every prisoner-of-war camp? Of course there were, cleverly staged, one of which I have sketched in connection with the British surveillance methods at Cockfosters. But like it, none of them achieved the aim of reaching Germany, of returning to the battlefront. I will not record them here, for they have been described at length, in detail and very suspensefully in Reinhard Stallmann’s
Die Ausbrecherkönige von Kanada
*
and also in part in Paul Carell’s
Die Gefangenen
.
†

As a result of the distance and the Battle of the Atlantic, the delivery of our personal mail took much more time than it had in England. To this was added the usual delay of censorship. Letters from Germany needed two or three months to reach Canada; they moved faster in the opposite direction. Towards the end of the war, the delivery time increased greatly. Mail did not arrive for a year or more; the connection was largely or completely broken. Then the flight of much of the German population and the chaos and destruction in the homeland led to an eloquent silence.

*
Supreme Command of the Armed Forces

*
“German History in the 19th Century.”

*
In the foreword to the second volume of
Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert
, Freiburg/Br., 1933.

*
The Breakout Kings of Canada
.

†
The Prisoners
.

42    Crisis in Camp

Our opportunities to follow the events of the ever-widening war and political changes around the globe were excellent—if one used them. Of course, German government reports could not officially be obtained. The forwarding of German newspapers and the like was prohibited; the only thing left was to listen in illegally on shortwave transmissions from the Reich. To receive them, soon after the opening of the camp skillful hands had conjured up a radio set, built from next to nothing and concealed in the hollow leg of a table the prisoners had made. The electricity for it was taken from the Canadian system by means of a converter. Replacement tubes were obtained as needed by mobilizing the kindness of our Canadian guards by—
stets paraten
—plausible pretexts and with the help of little gifts. This information gathering was extremely delicate; the radio was also capable of transmitting, and every such contact with the outside world was a dangerous undertaking for prisoners of war; one must never be caught off guard. Keeping the radio secret was of utmost importance and the daily tuning-in was done only with the strictest security against unwelcome surprises, with lookouts at the door. The news received served as the camp’s quasi-official “newscast,” which was read out after the noon meal.

But whoever wished to inform himself beyond this “something for everybody” information that mirrored the officialese of the Reich could do this, too. On the outside of the living quarters hung loudspeakers from which one could listen to public radio programs, news, and entertainment, to which the Canadian camp administration tuned in. It was possible to take subscriptions to Allied newspapers
and magazines, which were easily paid for from our monthly allowances. Of course, some prisoners could not stand such media. “All purely enemy propaganda, we don’t want it.” They rejected information from Allied sources
a limine
. Others subscribed, however. I took the conservative Toronto daily paper,
The Globe and Mail
, the British weekly
Daily Mail Overseas
, the U.S. business magazine
Fortune
and later, in place of the latter, the British political monthly magazine
The Nineteenth Century and After. The Globe and Mail
also regularly carried syndicated columns by two of the most important American journalists, the great international commentator Walter Lippmann and that German expert and humanist, the unforgettable Dorothy Thompson. With the help of these publications I felt that I was broadly and for the most part accurately informed about the course of the war and world politics.

Of course, as a subject of conversation in camp, world politics and—as a congruent to the subject of Hitler—politics in general were for me as good as taboo. The monstrous spectacle of the dictatorship in the Reich and the hopelessness of helping the victims who had become addicted to the propaganda of the Brown state to gain reasonable national perspective had long since closed my mouth. On Hitler, there was a parting of minds; opposing attitudes towards him lacked any common ground. For our camp community was fundamentally nothing else than a miniature German “Community of the Folk,” as though viewed through a reducing lens with a power of five hundred. Its center was formed by the overwhelming majority of Hitler-believing fellow travellers. On the opposing ends of the spectrum were the representatives of more pronounced viewpoints; on one side, the extreme, fanatical Nazis, the so-called 150 percenters, and on the other, insignificant in numbers, the confirmed opponents of the regime. And did it make sense to heat up raw emotions in conversations with those who thought differently, without the release of purposeful activity, indeed without any possibility of it, behind barbed wire in the middle of a war? Very dangerous. The consequences could not be controlled. Politically motivated murder and manslaughter had already occurred in other camps. Better, then, to keep one’s mouth shut and to work. On a still very distant day one would again be free to say what one wished. Hitler could not hold the Germans in chains forever. To be sure, he might have nothing to fear from inside. But now the military might of almost the entire world was threatening him. He himself had set it in motion against him. He was his own worst enemy.